A Week Off...

Hey All!

As you probably noticed, we didn’t get a chance to put a post up since last Wednesday. I wish I had a good excuse for you, but to be completely honest, we just didn’t get around to it. Our free time is a precious commodity these days, and while we do our best to take pictures and get the blog posted, it sometimes just falls through the cracks.

So let’s get you caught up on the week that was…

We continue to expand Landon’s diet with new foods all the time. This week we introduced frozen peas and carrots, shredded cheese, and spaghetti noodles (with a small amount of sauce). Landon absolutely loved the spaghetti, and he especially enjoyed playing with the noodles between bites…but we think that the sauce gave him some very uncomfortable gas pains after the fact…so we might hold off on giving him the sauce again for a while. He slurped up the noodles like a pro though! The shredded cheese was fun for him, as it’s so soft that he could just pile handful after handful into his mouth without swallowing, and he had these huge “chipmunk cheeks” full of shredded cheese. He also enjoyed the peas and carrots, but not quite as much as the other meals. All of the meals were extremely messy, but very entertaining.

Landon has not yet mastered the art of feeding himself yet, and for every handful of food that goes into his mouth, there are 4 or 5 handfuls that drop on to his lap. The dogs have been very supportive of this eating habit and have expressed their opinion that he not progress any farther in his eating education. We actually have to restrain them sometimes, as they just want to lay their head in his lap and wait for the food to fall. Landon has been getting a kick out of it for sure! Yes, the picture isn't very good, but that is Guinness with the blue collar!

Another thing that we have been working on with Landon is the word “no”. So far Landon thinks that this word is very funny, but really has no meaning. He likes the way it sounds and it usually makes him laugh…the louder or more forceful that we say it, the more he laughs at it! For instance, Michaela and I probably spent about an hour last night chasing him away from the dog’s water bowls. Every time he would climb up there, we’d say “Landon, please don't touch that.” or “Landon, no thank you”…he’d stop climbing, look at us with a goofy grin, laugh for about 5 seconds, and then go back to climbing on the bowls!! He is absolutely obsessed with them at this point, and while we tell him “no” and constantly re-locate him to other areas of the house, he is always making a bee-line back to the bowls. He likes to climb up onto them, stick his hands/arms/sleeves into them, and then splash around.

Michaela was actually sharing this story with one of the teachers at Landon’s daycare, and she told Michaela that her daughter did the same thing for a while. Then she learned that the dogs actually drank the water…so she started taking handfuls of the water from the bowl and she’d walk it across the entire house to give to the dogs! So I guess we’ve got that to look forward to…it’s really making me re-think the hardwood floors that we put in!

As you can see by the pictures, Landon is getting bigger every day. We’re actually getting worried that he’s going to be too big for his changing table soon. We’re not exactly sure what comes next, and we’re starting to wonder if we’ll have to change him on the floor. While this will be a pain with our dogs being so interested in his diapers, it might be nice because we won’t have to worry about him rolling off the table. Lately whenever we need to change him, he’s constantly trying to roll away from us and off the table, so it ends up being a wrestling match between us and a giant fish that wants to go back into the water!

Also, just today, Michaela noticed today that another one of Landon’s teeth has cut through! Talk about slacking on our parenting, we didn’t even realize that he was teething again. Apparently he cut through his top left one in the last few days, and he now has 5 teeth (3 on top, 2 on bottom). They’re really starting to come in now!

We’re constantly reminded that we're getting closer and closer to the holiday, which is absolutely baffling to us. Where did the year go? Every night we take Landon and our dogs for a walk around our neighborhood, and Landon is constantly awed by the pretty Christmas lights. We have the icicle type lights on our house, and he usually tries to grab at them when he passes under them as well. We are planning on taking him to Dovewood Court this weekend, which is a famous street in Sacramento where every house is decorated for Christmas. Each house goes “all out” with different themes, including a Jimmy Buffett Christmas-themed house! It’s usually pretty impressive and we can’t wait to see his face. We’ve actually talked my sister Nicole and our cousins Ashley and Scott to come with us, so we’ll be making it a family affair.

Other than that, we’ve got to get all of our house cleaning done this weekend since we’re completely booked up the following weekend before leaving for Arizona. We’ll probably knock out the rest of our Christmas shopping this weekend as well, and try to fit in a couple of our favorite Christmas movies…for years my Mom’s family has made it a tradition to watch White Christmas together (an all-time favorite with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye). Since then Michaela and I have added a few more Christmas movies to the list of favorites which include:

-Elf (Probably Will Ferrell’s best movie…if you haven’t seen it, stop reading and go get it now!)

-Love Actually (very funny British movie, all-star cast, but NOT a kid’s movie)

-Home Alone (AHHHHH!!!!!!)

-Die Hard (The original is still one of my favorite movies, and yes, it takes place on Christmas Eve)

-Scrooged (Bill Murray at his post-Caddyshack best!!)

We actually have like 10 more favorites as well, but these are the best ones I could think of. Anyhow, we’ve got our work cut out for us if we’re going to be able to get all of these watched before the holiday, but we’ll do our best and see how far we get.

Last but not least, I’d like to mention that my Cowboys lost last weekend (actually they gave the game away), so this weekend’s matchup against the New York Giants has now reached “win or go home” status…so guess where I’ll be on Sunday? If you guessed hiding under my bed praying that they won, then you’d be right!

Have a great week and we’ll see you soon!